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Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist
Beeftopia sends this excerpt from an article at BusinessWeek:
"There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense," says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. "They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV." ... The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. "It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor," Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011 review (PDF) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had "fragmented and restricted" oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. "Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor," says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.
You'd have to be out of your mind to pursue a career in the above in the USA right now.
Or; more correctly; you'd have to be out of your mind to work as an employee in one of the above. I migrated to business and finance from a electrical engineering job. My salary is new three times (3X) what I made as an engineer, which topped out at around $100k. I'll be retired, or independently set up, before I'm 45 - then I can go back to tech on my terms.
Kids aren't stupid. Ye reap what ye sow. Cough it up.
All of the tech industries behavior point to a desire to keep wages lower than what they would pay in an open market. Whether it's expanding H1B's or agreeing not to poach the goal is the same not driving up the cost of talent. Thus we have a "shortage" of tech workers so we must import more rathe than we have an abundant supply at higher wages so lets hire them. I am not surprise at the GAO report. What needs to be done is make H1B visas portable so after say 6 month to a year the holder was free to switch jobs. That would end abuses quickly and all of a sudden the "shortage" would disappear when it becomes more costly to get and keep an H1B then hire a local.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
We know this. They know this. Will it matter?
"Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor..."
Gee, you think?
Seriously, as a working engineer, the fact that this hasn't been emphasised this has annoyed me for years. There is no shortage of bright, hard working engineering talent in the US, and the our schools are (and have been for years) capable of turning out as many well-educated engineering graduates as the industry requires. It's just that they want to make enough money to live a good life (and pay back the cost of their education). Graduates from the Farkistan Institue of Technology are *so* much cheaper. And they don't ask for raises or threaten to change jobs...because they would get sent home.
Do you seriously believe that a foreign H1B with an MS, working for $35k is equivalent to a US graduate?
How many number of interviews do companies go through to hire someone?
Last I heard, Facebook goes through ~100 people to fill 1 spot. My company goes through about 20 or so before finding a candidate worthy of a face-to-face interview... Most flunk on basic questions like "describe any sorting mechanism" (someone hands you 1000 sheets of paper, each with a page number out of order, walk me through the process you will use to sort them).
The problem isn't that there's a shortage of "tech workers", there isn't.
It's that most "tech" workers suck. If you want to hire someone who actually knows their stuff, you gotta pick them right out of school, and make sure they're actually "techy" kind (those that actually do their own homeworks because they find them interesting). Now, *those* tech workers are like 1% of "all tech workers", and yes, there's a shortage of those---but not something the h1b can fix.
This is exactly the same issue that migrant laborers are stuck with. The claim is made that Americans will not do field labor. The food industry uses that excuse and pushes to not crack down on undocumented workers. But if we shut down undoucmented workers field labor would receive far higher wages and then those jobs might be much more attractive for American workers. And it extends into other areas as well. The guy that labors in construction has his wages controlled by the availability of labor. So if the farm workers were paid more people who labor or work as store clerks may also receive higher wages or decide to work in the fields. And this conspiracy actually has official support. For example convicts on work programs are often assigned to work as field labor at very low pay rates with the lions share of their pay going back to the prison. Or the prison may have its own farm with the food being consumed by the convicts which also holds down the demand for field labor. And to the right wing nuts this situation is a great example of why supply and demand is not meaningful in economics. It demonstrates that supply as well as demand can be controlled by forces other than exchange for goods and services.
Everyone already knows this, whether they want to admit it or not.
The real question is will the US gov ever actually do anything to benefit US workers, or are they already too far under the thumbs of the hi tech companies?
If they really were looking for the high skilled, highly productive people they claim they need by the battalion, they'd be beating the drum to expand the O1 visa program and they'd be lying, cheating and stealing their way into monopolizing its pipeline. That they are going H1B is proof that their needs are, well, mundane. Facebook might love to have a labor force that's all good enough to work on HHVM and other cool, skunkworksy projects. Truth is, they don't. Most seasoned American web developers could easily jump in and work on their core products.
It's been proven, time and time again that the H1B program and the so called "Tech Worker Gap" is a untrue and yet here is another "Research work." The H1B program is there so employers can not be affected by market forces. Couple that with non-competes, "right shoring" and non-poaching agreements that are killing the tech labor force in this country.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
This sort of phenomenon is a natural effect of globalization. A century ago, the world contained wealthy advanced nations, developing nations, and lots of "backward" nations which lacked modern industries and hence had a relatively low standard of living. However, this was somewhat compensated for by a low cost of living. Someone might only earn a dollar or two a day, but food was cheap and life was OK.
Enter globalization: the inevitable outcome of free-market, free-trade economics plus cheap ubiquitous transport. Within a few decades, the world became one single marketplace and - as we in the wealthier nations have seen to our cost - jobs began "finding their own level", that is being exported to the cheapest countries.
Not satisfied with that, bosses and shareholders wanted to bring in cheap labour to do those relatively few jobs that couldn't be done "at long range". Obvious examples are construction, health care, personal service of all kinds, and to some extent expensive specialities like law. (Not many lawyers in India have US bar qualifications, and even if they had they couldn't very well show up in a US court).
After the first irrational exuberance for outsourcing skilled jobs (like IT) to cheaper countries, even the most thick-headed of PHBs are now coming to recognize that outsourcing of this kind doesn't usually work too well. No matter how good the workers are, the communication problems (and often cultural discrepancies) are just too great. Hence the increasing eagerness to import cheap (but well qualified and skilled) labour to do those jobs under direct (not to say oppressively close) supervision.
Unfortunately, citizens of nations like the USA get it coming and going: the government taxes them heavily in order to provide services in a "first world" manner, while allowing business to export jobs to "third world" nations (or bring their workers to the USA to work there). This is a classic "wealth pump" which systematically sucks up wealth and transfers it to the rich.
Ironically, globalization looks set to be pretty much complete and settled in, just in time for the cheap oil that made it possible to run out. Then we'll all have to face the expense and disruption of reverting to relative economic independence within our own countries.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
That's what some of the service techs were getting paid to do on-site service for Dell, last time I checked. And that's in the DC metro area, where cost of living is way high!
Gee... I wonder why people aren't lining up to take those job offers?!
When will we finally get to a ruling class no longer pining for the pre-civil war days?
I was thinking a "no shit" tag would also be appropriate here as well. This is exactly what the workers have been saying. We're rare, but we're not that rare. Just rare enough to be worth a premium, and to have the audacity to demand things like good benefits and a work-life balance.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
From the crop of developers I've interviewed over the last few years, there are a bunch of under-skilled people who think very highly of themselves and want to be paid more than they are worth.
My company has hired some very bright people and paid them very well. But then there are people like this MIT grad we hired several years ago, purely based on her resume and what BS came out of her mouth, only to discover she was perhaps one of the worst developers I've ever worked with. She was fired several months later. We looked at dozens of resumes, and interviewed 5 or so. Of that batch, she was the only one that seemed remotely qualified.
My 'replacement' at my last job made 2/3rds of what I made, and within a month or two they discovered why I was worth the wages they paid me as he single-handledly almost destroyed a critical database that would have put them out of business and then didn't have the skills to fix it. They had to hire me as a contractor to help fix the mess he made.
Many of our current developers seem to think QA is where you send code to find bugs once it compiles clean. The ones that work in my new group are going to learn really fast that depending on QA to find your bugs is the quickest way to find the door.
If someone wants a batch of developers they have to babysit and spoon feed requirements to, they are a dime a dozen and deserve to be paid the same. If someone wants developers who can think for themselves, are self-motivated, and are able to fill in the blanks by finding things out ... they are few and far between and worth the price paid.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
... Have wanted cheaper labour.
So what has changed, what is different in Tech than others?
Is it that Laws have changed allowing this behaviour?
Is it that American Tech workers are demanding more than they are worth, and the companies simply cannot afford to pay that?
Is it that America has a shortage of skilled Tech workers who can do the jobs that the companies want done?
Is it that to get higher female quotas, or just non-white at least, they need a bigger pool to draw from?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Oh there's a shortage. There's a shortage of STEM jobs with ADEQUATE SALARIES. When Zuckerberg and others are up there on Capital Hill begging for more H1B visas, what they're saying is "There is a shortage of STEM workers." But what they MEAN is "There is a shortage of STEM workers willing to work for slave wages."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo... Here, no such thing as a STEM shortage only the desire to suppress wages.
This has never been about a skills shortage, it has always been about lowering the market rate for those skills.
Basically these companies are publicly saying they want to go to an external economy to drive down labor costs for tech jobs.
This is entirely about corporate greed and entitlement, and has never been about anything other than driving down wages.
And somehow politicians have bought this hook line and sinker.
Or, more accurately, the politicians have been bought, and the rest of us be damned.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I tend to agree, the issue in the Tech Industry isn't as much the shortage of workers, as it's much more a shortage of the Industry to pay a wage for the worker they want. In lieu of that, the Industry isn't as willing to invest in it's Human Capital, expanding training and skill sets. They're afraid if they train you, you'll go find a better job. Well, if you don't train them, what if they stagnate and don't go find a better job?
If you aren't challenging your Tech Workers, then they want to move on, to avoid being bored, to find a new challenge. But if you train them, invest in them, they become invested in their company, and if they're challenged, they're just too busy and too happy to think about if the grass is greener on the other side of the street.
There's a reason that H1B workers strive to be great English speakers. English is the language of business, and it's still where people want to move towards to be successful. If we cultivate a culture of Tech Workers to move a long...then companies become a Journey, not a Destination. Would you rather work for a company who is the proverbial Wilderness, or the Promised Land?
Invest in Human Capital. That's how a Company is built that becomes a Destination, and not just a Journey to something better.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Here's why I'm not convinced that the answer is simply higher salaries. To be sure, some workers who could be doing tech decide to do something else. Maybe they go into academia, finance, IP law, etc. Raising tech salaries across the board, by everyone who employs tech workers, would steal some of these guys back. But would it be enough? You would probably also motivate some young people to go into tech that currently go into other fields. But that's for the future; it doesn't help the present. The fact is that there's a fixed supply of domestic talent at each point along the talent spectrum. You could pay 10x as much and it won't magically increase the amount of available talent. If there is, in fact, not enough talent to "go around", i.e. to fill all the tech positions employers want to fill, then we don't just have a salary problem.
Side note: what's good for the domestic tech worker may not be the same as what's good for the country. That is to say, an influx of highly-skilled foreign tech workers might depress salaries in the short term, but an abundance of cheap tech labor could juice the success of domestic tech companies which, in the long run, may actually be better for the U.S. as a whole.
There's also anecdotal evidence that the U.S. is becoming less attractive to foreign talent and not more. Which, in my opinion, is terrible news.
What they want is more flexible workers. Guest workers are very flexible. Given that they are already immigrants, whats the difference to them if they work in New-york the first half of the year and Seattle the second?
I went through this is the late 90s/ early 2000s. I'd get a job as some company was building some new product, have solid work for a year... then there'd be the long, inevitable breakup as they found a way to lay us off another year later. So I'd go onto another project... same thing. Then my current company did the guest worker thing... I hear a lot of nonsense about them, mostly indian... not being qualified. I'd have to disagree. I'd say there are good and bad just like US workers, but there are certainly stars that stand out. Some of our best coders are from india, and I actually found out during our last pot luck that not all Indian food has curry in it and I even liked some of it. I got hired on permanently because they know I'm not just going to move away. The distinction of who goes at the end of the project and who doesn't is clear. The temps. Before, I could have been working somewhere for 5yrs, then bring in 20 new us workers for a project and when that's over 20 go home. It may be the new people, but it might be me!
The many and varied services that do projects for you are Terrible I've been through so many nightmare projects that were outsourced like that... uggg. They charge way too much and deliver the lowest quality work they possibly can.
I'm not sure what the answer to this dilemma is, but it's not simple at all.
Is there a "Well Duh" tag somewhere?
It's like late night informercials. You might see right through this, but someone is buying it.
This always reminds me Native American at Anti-Immigration Protest: 'You're All Illegal'
Not only US Its about commoditisation of skills and lack of vision from a generation of middle managers who don't just want someone who can do the job, but someone who can do the job *tomorrow, without any lead-up*. Never mind it takes time to adapt to new processes anyway - the job spec says Mysql 5.2. Therefore nothing but Mysql 5.2 will do. The recruitment industry should bears its share of responsibility also.
Do you want to hire foreign talents that are genius ? Pay in taxes the same amount, or some percentage like 50% of what you will pay for salary, this will increase the costs to hire someone from overseas. But If the guy is REALLY talented, this increase on costs will pay itself with his brilliant work.
You can cut off this tax, when the guy is free to switch jobs wherever he wants to( If/When he get a green card), while he is bound to you, you pay the tax.
A lot of what evolved to what we call engineering today was developed and started in Scotland (and Northern England); while a "profession" it didn't originate with the aristocracy in London, like lawyering and doctoring (notwithstanding a fine medical school in Edinburgh). Steam engine, bridge design, steel, etc.
One cannot be in the highest classes if one sullies one's hands with toil or trade, don't you know?
I think the "tech worker shortage" is really just a shortage of people who have no idea how to run a technical company.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They may not be able to find them at the price they want.
Zuckerberg's taking care of that.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Yes siree Bob! That ol' invisible hand is really working for us.
We need government to get out of the way and let in all the low-cost immigrant labor we can get, without all those pesky regulations. Business needs to be free to innovate!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Which is an ill omen for where the economy might be heading. Over the last few decades there has been this big mantra that the loss of manufacturing jobs will be offset by tech and service jobs, but the numbers of such jobs being created is far smaller than the middle class jobs being lost and now we are seeing those jobs experiencing a greater and greater wage divide with an increasingly small number making more money and a majority getting closer and closer to lower class.
While protectionism has its own set of problems, the pure market solution is not panning out well either.
It is too bad that we did not learn from doctors, lawyers, nurses, etc. back when there was ridiculous demand for tech professionals in the 90's. We should have set up a professional governance board and lobbied for licensing requirements (licensing that the professional board controls) to do certain jobs (programming, server admin, networking, IT security, etc.). That would have stopped the race to the bottom in salaries and quality (lower pay gives you lower quality).
We don't need full on product protectionism. What could work well is a tax system that rewards domestic wages.
*nod* there are all sorts of measured solutions to the issues. Sadly, well balanced solutions tend to sell very poorly to the the public so we mostly get people ranting about simplified extreme measures.
What is this 'work-life balance' to which you refer?
Alternatively, we could just stop actively encouraging the exporting of jobs.
What we have going on right now is the opposite of "protectionism". We could solve a lot of the problem by simply not doing anything. Doing nothing is not a form of "Protectionism".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Completely agree with you. Though I think a guild / professional association (like the AMA or Bar association) would be a better fit than a union.
Even the government is culpable. The national lab where I live has frozen wages so many times that the PhD's working there are on the bottom end of the pay scale for people with their degrees.
Mind you, I have to wonder where those people on the top end are. Really, who *is* hiring PhD chemists and physicists and paying them so well?
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
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It's always been about the salaries and nothing else.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
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I agree completely. I'm not sure a masters degree will change that for an IT career, unless you want to get into upper management.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Those kids at school, boys and girls who were socially popular, always trying to stay on top of the social list are the ones who managed to make it into managers by doing the same clicky behavior.
They are also the same people who treated techies / geeks poorly. They are now your bosses. They don't appreciate what you do and just want it done as cheap and disposible as possible for their profits.
40 hour workweek, at least two weeks paid vacation, and reasonable sick leave.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
We don't need full on product protectionism. What could work well is a tax system that rewards domestic wages.
And what good is that going to do? A 50% tax cut on zero income isn't worth much, and that's what they'd like - free labor.
Or did you mean tax cuts on the employer side? Funny, all those savings on productivity gains didn't cause employers to go out and hire more people, so why do you expect saving on taxes to be magically different? All they do is pocket the difference.
A 50% tax cut on zero income isn't worth much
Yeah, but it sure will mean a lot to billionaire CEO's--the exact people who need it the LEAST (and who are exporting all the jobs and using the most indentured servants in the first place).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Your "shortage" is my "insufficient surplus"...
I dare say that 99% of the countries in the world openly engage in some form of favoritism for their own citizens or government protectionism with regards to trade or employment. Why should the U.S. be the only country that doesn't do this? Are we so self-loathing and anti-patriotic now that the very idea of putting America and Americans first has become a dirty concept?
Thanks for your taxes and dedication, citizen. But we can't give you any special treatment over any random non-citizen from anywhere in the world. But again, thanks for the taxes.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Those "pesky regulations" are the exact cause of this problem - and is the exact reason why Libertarians want government out of employer/labor relations.
If government had not given favored immigration status to tech workers, the free market would naturally settle on wages via supply and demand. Tech companies with the aid of the US government distorted the labor market to increase supply and drive down wages.
An Econ 101 student could understand this and see what is happening. Why you can't is a mystery.
Why do they hate America?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Working 40 hours a week and telling your boss he can stick it if he thinks that's not enough.
Gotta love living in a country with a social security system worth its name!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
4 weeks vacation or we needn't even start talking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because of its fucked up labour laws maybe?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Taxes need to go up, not down. The constant slashing of taxes is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Yeah, yeah, I know, nobody likes to hear that. But the lower the tax, the more the poor are at a disadvantage.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know why they bother; if those are exempt employees (which they are, if the employer has any brains). It's perfectly legal to require your exempt employees to work many many more hours than the 40 they're getting paid for on paper, and not compensate them for anything over 40. At least for now, if someone complains about long hours, as far as the employer is concerned, they can either 1) shut the fuck up and get back to work, or 2) be threatened with replacement by a cheaper worker. It's harder to do that in technical roles, but not impossible. The effort is probably worth it if you make an example out of someone; the others will be less likely to complain if they see someone frogmarched to the door for speaking up.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Yeah, but do you really have to put all those home shopping victims into Washington? Don't you have some other sort of job project for the differently abled in the US?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You might want to get your sarcasm detector checked :)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Dude, this is America.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Technical Licensing is generally a scam devoted to earning more money for Microsoft and Cisco and others. It has very little to do with guaranteeing the quality of the tech help that you hire.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Bottom line: They're cheap. They can hire 4 of them for the cost of one FTE here. That's all they care about. Dollars are easy to quantify; quality of work is more difficult, especially when you're a walking haircut in an empty suit with an MBA and remarkable myopia. Trying to get an MBA to understand the difference between "cheap" and "good" is like talking to a wall most of the time. In their mind, they are the same. They don't understand what their reports do, and refuse to listen to them when they raise a problem that might require 1) actual work on their part, or 2) (shock horror) SPENDING MONEY.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
It's not just tech companies who need tech workers. Many companies outside of tech need tech workers. And those companies can be located anywhere.
The problem is the cost of living is so high in tech areas like the SF Bay that intelligent workers REQUIRE higher pay. Then in backwards states like Indiana, where tech workers are not respected in the least, pay is worse than factory workers and the governor prefers to outsource the state's unemployment database work to India, claiming there's no money for job training in the state budget.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
"is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff." If they want that, they can start with replacing the highest paid, least skilled workers in the companies...the upper management.
I was thinking a "no shit" tag would also be appropriate here as well.
My first thought was "notnews".
No one I know in my industry in the United States has two weeks of vacation. Three and four are the most common, with some long-term company-people getting five.
Companies with job openings have a choice in the free market:
* They can raise salaries or otherwise improve the work environment, which has the effect of "poaching" from those who would choose to do other kinds of work instead (plus a few who might choose to not do paid work at all such as would-be stay-at-home parents)
* They can lower their requirements, which increases the qualified applicant pool
* They can decide they would rather leave the position unfilled or eliminate the position entirely, and use the money they saved for some different purpose, such as creating non-technical-jobs or technical buying goods and services from overseas
* They can try to import or create talent that is willing to work for below-market wages or work in below-what-is-acceptable-by-society working conditions
I bolded the first one because it cuts to the heart of any real "shortage" that might exist - if companies do that, then they will either steal from other employers and/or related industries, possibly creating a similar shortage there, or entice young adults to get the training they need to enter this career field. The first is the free job market at work but it does nothing to eliminate the "overall" shortage of talent across all affected employers/industries. The latter is desirable but only if it doesn't create shortages in the industries that these students would otherwise go into upon graduation.
The second option isn't always an option - lowering your standards for employment may do far more harm than paying more or eliminating the position.
Barring legal or other barriers to trade, the third option - exporting the work to another country - is frequently viable. However, quality control and other issues may be harder to control than doing the work in-house. Caveat employer.
Now, the open question is how much of the "shortage" is real - that is, how much would "appear" to be solved by just raising wages but which would really amount to playing musical chairs with existing American talent - and how much is "artificial" - that is, how much could be filled by existing American talent that is currently unemployed or under-employed and which can't get a job because employers rig job descriptions so they "aren't qualified" or because employers offer salaries that they know no American will accept but which they know a non-American would be happy to accept?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
on how various sectors of the US work force did and did not protect itself from stuff like this.
... in San Francisco, that is. Those people who protest the gentrification of their neighborhoods could tell you a few things about the "slave wages" that Bay Area companies are paying their software developers.
Which is why I said a professional board. You think passing the bar exam or getting your license to practice medicine is a scam? That is the level of licensing I am talking about.
The constant slashing of taxes is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Sure. The internet bubble, the housing bubble, and two wars were free.
Just another day in Paradise
My wife has been an RN for 15 years. When she went, she got an Associates degree. She is working on her BSN completion because of career limitations but she still got licenses as an RN and passed the NCLEX 15 years ago.
yeah.....not.
The current state has the idiots coming over because there is no accreditation board involved in vetting and licensing the people who do highly sensitive work.
and that's what they'd like - free labor.
Who's this "they"? Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Google (who else has a billionaire tech CEO?) all pay top-tier wages. Sure, there are EAs and CAs out there too, but at least they threw CA's CEO in prison.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And you're wondering why skilled workers prefer to go elsewhere?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can frogmarch the first complainer to the door, unfortunately, that guy or gal is statistically likely to be your best.
Cheap storage VM.
As a information security remediation security specialist, the company I worked for in Silicon Valley offers paid federal holidays and 20 PTO days.
There's one silver lining in all this bitching about needing more H-1 visas. The tech companies that can't find enough cheap labor in the US are still looking for labor in the US. They could find all the cheap labor they want as long as they're willing to outsource the jobs to India - but they've already tried that, and it doesn't work.
As one of the few remaining onshore resources in an outsourced company, I can attest to the horrible inefficiencies that outsourcing brings to a tech project. Sure, it's cheaper. Perhaps even by enough to account for all the extra process to manage the outsourced workers. But what isn't said in there is that nothing actually gets done. Our outsourced systems are gradually falling into unsupportability by a thousand bits of bad code put in by cheap offshore resources that don't have adequate guidance to get up to speed without doing damage - and aren't kept on the project long enough to ever finally do some productive work once they get up to speed.
The big guys either know this intuitively, or have tried outsourcing and know it from painful experience. Either way, asking for H-1 visas amounts to an admission that outsourcing tech jobs doesn't work. Now we just need the political will to tell them that paying crap wages isn't an option either.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Full repeal of the Bush\Obama tax cuts would restore $4T in revenue to the annual budget and pay off the national debt in five years.
Why would anyone want to support your $200K drug habit?
Who said it was the job of government to give the poor any advantages? The more you subsidize something, the more of it you get. Fact. Sorry. And a pox on whoever decided that the purpose of the tax code is to manipulate the citizenry.
And you live in Topeka, or some other small midwest or rustbelt town.
Cheap storage VM.
In Silicon Valley, New York, Seattle, and select other high-tech hubs, there certainly is a shortage of skilled qualified workers. This is clearly illustrated by the salaries and perks at tech companies are driven to such extremes. Google and Facebook don't have a personal chef and free dry cleaning and egg freezing because they are your best buddy; they do it because they have to offer these kinds of perks to retain their people.
In non high-tech hubs, these shortages do not exist. There are lots of qualified workers.
The question is, why do tech companies focus so much on the hubs vs. growing a lot of smaller regional offices. This is something I have never understood. Especially if you subscribe to the model of Bezos and others who say the maximum size of a productive team is somewhere between 5 and 7 people, having huge amounts of people concentrated in one area has questionable benefits when you consider the huge salary they command due to the simple fact of geography.
Is it legal for me to complete with them? No.
Why is their salary lower? Because they live where their costs are lower. I am limited in what I can do about that. Sell my kids for medical experiments? Sell my kidneys?
Can I immigrate there? No.
What happens in/to the US? Wages go down. More unemployed. More unemployment to be paid ( or not, causing unrest ).
Less money available, less moving around, less revenue for companies selling to US customers/clients/etc. More layoffs due to these lower revenues.
The Pollyanna "innovate", "become an entrepreneur" are great, but carry risks and usually require capital. And see above, less money to access.
It doesn't look like free trade from where I sit, but blood sucking.
You see it differently, I am guessing. Good for you. But, if the positions were reversed, and your economic elites were selling you and yours down the river, would you smile and offer the same platitude?
emt 377 emt 4
That assumes that they care about losing "the best". They would rather have a bunch of mediocre workers that get the job done and accept poor treatment than have good workers who want crazy shit like market wages and to be treated like human beings. At a certain point "good" is no longer profitable, you reach the point of diminishing returns. Cheap > good again. The Walmart effect in action.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
You do something like this.
Get rid of corporate tax.
VAT tax is 25% on all goods.
Domestic labor costs are 125% deductible from VAT duties.
You can combine the two. Raise taxes in other areas and still advantage domestic labor.
Any given tax system is a manipulation. That's a non argument. The question is only which manipulation.
When an economy has 8-10% unemployment, that economy should not import labor for any reason. Governments exist to protect it's citizens - that includes REASONABLE immigration policies.
I'm the second generation of a family of immigrants. My grandparents came here almost 10 years apart due to restrictive immigration policies. Generally grandpa waited his place in line, came here with a sponsor, worked, and paid taxes. After establishing himself here, was he allowed to bring over the rest of the family.
Allowing too many people into a country, too quickly, is a sure fire way to hurt the local workforce, and stress social support systems to their breaking point.
Unfortunately the politicians in charge don't give a damn about the citizens they claim to serve.
Many of the VC-backed "startups" in the Bay Area are openly proud of their death-march style 60hr work weeks.
Simple, the executives want to live in the fancy neighborhoods with the best schools, etc. Their head explodes if they think about managing teams "remotely" a couple states over, in pretty much the same time zone.
Tell me how a flat tax of 10% on *everyone's* income starting at the first dime is manipulation. Better yet, let's take the entire budget for government at all levels, divide it by the number of adults in the country, and present that bill, payable on demand, the day before primary elections. No taxes on property, fuel, death, profits, income, etc. Then we would figure out how much government we could afford.
You are taxing income but not capital gains. Which means you are creating a massive incentive for people to create situations where they take short term loses but build capital in their investment thereby offset their income. So for example it becomes highly profitable to sell my house to a 3rd party before doing extensive home repairs then buy it back while he charges me huge rent fees (i.e. negative income). It becomes the norm for companies to not pay dividends but do stock buybacks. It distorts the market by favoring equity over debt: in investors directly leverage up rather than companies leveraging up.
The other thing is of course you are taxing income but not property. So you are encouraging property to stay underutilized. Japan has traditionally had this problem where very valuable real estate doesn't go to its rational (i.e. highest disposition).
The third thing is you are forcing more direct government intervention. The government right now is able to shift societal resources by offering tax incentives. By getting rid of those you force the government to directly buy things and pass them out which is likely to increase cronyism.
Fourth, the tax you propose isn't very progressive. 10% isn't going to cover the current size of government, it would likely have to be more in the 30-40% range. That's going to hit the lower middle -upper middle class very hard.
10% on *everyone's* income starting at the first dime
No taxes on property, fuel, death, profits, income, etc.
Death is only taxed as an alternative to, not addition to, income taxes. So death taxes, profit taxes, income taxes are on income.
As your plan is inconsistent, I can only assume you gave it as much thought as your description of it shows... None. And that shows.
Learn to love Alaska
Those that allow the bastardization of the H1B program to persist are not traitors, but they would rather sell their patriotisum to the highest bidder.
Oh good grief. 15 years after the DotCon implosion, when industry leaders and Congress responded to the collapse in tech employment by ramping up H-1b guest worker visas, we're supposed to believe this is news?
Seastead this.
Wrong. A death tax by definition is double taxation. The greedy bastards in government have an insatiable lust for the fruits of your labor. And the more they take, the more they spend, and at some point the whole thing is going to implode. We have already run up the largest debt in the history of mankind. The operational debt is almost $18 trillion, unfunded liabilities are over $115 trillion (about $988K per taxpayer). And it is still growing quickly regardless of the lies government feeds us. This debt is simply unsustainable. It is time to starve the beast.
Wrong. A death tax by definition is double taxation.
Nope. Person A is taxed once on the money. Person B gets it on the death of person A. The income for person B is taxed for the first time as a "death tax". Taxed once per person.
We have already run up the largest debt in the history of mankind.
And you want to fix the debt by cutting taxes.
It is time to starve the beast.
I was being sarcastic. We've been starving the beast since Reagan. Is it dead yet? At this point, the death by starvation will result in a complete economic collapse of the USA, and impact on the rest of the world. But the "starve the beast" supporters are generally survival nuts who would like to test their ability to survive anarchy (Mad Max style).
Learn to love Alaska
you want to handle skyrocketing debt by slashing revenue? That's like saying "I run up the credit card, time to quit my job". America lags on tax collection, not social services.
The point is that the government got their bite the first time around. What, do you think we should be taxing Christmas presents too? How about taxing the services that a mother provides to her child? Charity recipients should be paying tax on what they receive according to your "logic". No matter how much $ the beast gets, it will figure out how to squander it and then some. If we were spending at the same levels as the Clinton years, we would be running surpluses and paying down the debt. Tax-and-spenders like you will insure that the Mad Max scenario takes place.
It's certainly not the salary that draws people to Europe. It's more the fringe benefits. And yes, a month vacation per year is part of what makes this whole deal sweet. Gives you time to relax and unwind. And that's necessary.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, by dramatically slashing spending on social programs. End the welfare state. If Congress only spent on activities authorized by Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, we would be far, far more prosperous and freer. Poor people should be helped by charity, not by robbing the productive at gunpoint.
I don't agree that taxes should be progressive. The poor get to vote, so they should bear the consequences of voting for tax-and-spend politicians. And I believe that the federal government should be put on a massive diet. Our country did just fine before the income tax and the massive growth of the Leviathan it spawned.
The point is that the government got their bite the first time around.
Yes. They tax the person, not the money. Each person is taxed once and only once. That's double-dipping, to do something once and only once.
Tax-and-spenders like you will insure that the Mad Max scenario takes place.
Fuck you, you lying sack of shit. I want a smaller government. The "keep spending high and cut taxes will starve the beast" misanthropes like you will ruin the world.
Learn to love Alaska
Nice straw man. I never said keep spending high. That is your projection. I would love to see government spending reduced to 15% of GDP.
Who's "we"? The oligarchy are making out like bandits already, and the rest of the population by and large need some of those social programs to get by. Poor people are prevented from providing for themselves at gunpoint through a system that gives a small portion of the population exclusive use over most of the production in society and the right to profit from other people's labor through control of land and capital - i.e. property. The least we can do is balance it out with welfare.
This guy's been pushing this same nonsense for years and years - regardless of the current economic conditions or job climate.
But look how many ad impressions he was able to generate for Slashdot. Wonder if he got a kickback?
Murphy was an optimist
You said I was a tax-spender. If you don't like straw men, stop using them, you lying hypocrite.
Learn to love Alaska
There, FTFY. HAND.
"Slave wages"? Hyperbole much?
The basic point is fine. No need to add stuff like that.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
http://wh.gov/iCfVS
Casteism
If charity doesn't keep up, poor people will turn to crime to stay alive. Then "robbing the productive at gunpoint" won't just be a figure of speech. There seems to be a strong inverse correlation between welfare benefits and crime. Better welfare, less crime. Obviously, better education and decent employment is still better.
Market forces are wonderful when they work to the advantage of employers. But when they work to the advantage of employees, the employers get legislators to change the rules and tilt the playing playing field so employers have the advantage again. They corrupt the market. . Join a union. There really is no other way in the long run. Show your kids you love them and secure THEIR future.
Only boring people are ever bored.
There is so much you clearly don't understand... And I doubt explaining it to you will change that.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Your idiotic re-writing of the chronological history of Labor Unions in the US is wither the work of someone intent on spreading disinformation, or someone who's just plain stupid.
And THAT'S why you're AC.
Seriously, America does need to improve our immigration. Basically, we need to select based on what skills somebody brings, rather than if they have extended family here. H1B is about lowering pay for all, including the immigrants. If green cards are based on skills, AND new immigrants can move between companies, then everybody is a winner.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.